i. think. we are years actually on fire. they are part of every society yet their needs are often overlooked. worldwide there are more than 1000000000 people with a physical or mental disability. what scientific developments might improve their lives. we're taking a look in this edition of tomorrow today the science show on d w. it's great to have you with us welcome to the show.

about this because it is about hands or rather if we lose them how we can replace them it's not so easy because with our hands we can grasp tightly move smoothly and work with great precision. it takes children several years to learn to grip properly. this only works thanks to coordination of the brain nerves and muscles. and how does that work. when a movement is to be performed the brain sends commands to the muscles via the spinal cord. the signal arrives and the young is raised. the nerve cells in the spinal cord also conduct stimuli back to the brain the impulses flow in both directions. and that's at the core of the modern press that

a technology. this robotic hand can learn to cooperate with its wearer thanks to artificial intelligence. 'd is its teacher and also its owner today but i can use his robotic arm to carry out amazingly precise and fluid movements for him the ai based technology has opened up a new realm of possibilities. and it isn't for an interesting one huge advantage of the system is the fact that in the depths to me instead of me having to adapt to the system. it's a game changer i don't have to think about what i want my robot arm to do as i was familiar with he just does it automatically of the matters. is a farmer who lives in bavaria in southeastern germany tending to his crops and livestock

is all he's ever wanted to do. but after an accident involving a crop chopper blade his lower arm had to be amputated to continue farming he needed an artificial limb. seems to be the worst part was pulling out the arm and seen the open bones muscles and fibers that were covered in blood it was a terrible sight. despite surgery hours arm couldn't be saved to avoid having to give up his dream of being a farmer he urgently needed to replace the hand he lost his search led him to the prosthetics manufacturer auto box into just ott. they're they're pissed danniella vista failed teachers patients like our how to use their ai based robotic limbs the initial training process takes several weeks this specially designed cuff is fitted with 8 pairs of electrodes. they recognise tiny movements in the

muscles of the upper arm and ab visualizes these tiny movements in stores them as movement patterns. as. the cuff and connected by in them and inside the cuff there are lots of electorates. there's tiny impulses involved guns muscles will be transferred onto the. power is learning how to use his robotic limb. it's crucial that the tiny muscle impulses he's learning are as distinct as possible that way the prosthetic can link each impulse to a specific movement. he's not starting from scratch even after an amputation the brain remembers the patterns of movement needed to do things like open or close a hand. once muscle impulses become associated with specific movements the robotic limb will use ai to learn specific movement patterns the electrodes inside the robotic limb register the muscle impulses from the upper arm

. the app matches these muscle patterns to specific movements and stores them. hour spent weeks learning the basics the company's engineers we're building his robotic limb now it's ready to learn and adapt to powers movement patterns. and all the patient has to do is imagine carrying out movements with the missing hand this is them can distinguish among those imagined movements and then carry them out in the throughout. our his robotic limb means a major increase in quality of life. but i'm. controlling the movements it's just amazing that all you have to do is imagine opening your hand and the robot hand opens imagine closing it and it closes with the same rotation in the 1st set of arm just carries out these movements as. german prosthetics manufacturer auto block is charting new territory currently the technology only works on form prosthetics but

that might change soon other intelligent systems that control other lambs could soon follow. researchers are working on these and other developments. right now we're working on systems that could provide tactile signals to their wearers said expect can actually feel at some point i'm sure we'll be able to provide feedback on temperature or the information about the surface of the object being touched off the shelf not just gotten engaged on. that will help the researchers emulate a real hand as accurately as possible. what prosthetics have already made possible is on display at events like this i both won in zurich it's a sporting event where people with physical disabilities from all over the world come together every 4 years to compete in different disciplines the competitors demonstrate what today's prosthetics are capable of.

our will need many months and there be sessions to continue refining his work with his intelligent self learning prosthesis he's making progress quickly. but even with the help of artificial intelligence he needs a lot of patience and stamina to get used to living with his ai prosthesis. you just have to keep playing with it when something doesn't work you just have to keep trying it some movements work right away while others require more time and more practice and fought and fighting with. like many things practice makes perfect that's the only way the intelligent prosthesis can continue learning including therapy the cough and fine tuning the device has cost around 60000 euros which are covered by his professional accident insurance. and. quite honestly i can't imagine my life without this person he says i use it all day long depending on what i'm

currently doing. i use the producers for every day purposes at home too for things like eating there are so many things i use it for is it. thanks to his prosthetic arm bauer can continue to follow his dream. contrast to purely physical disability there are developmental disorders that are not immediately apparent and often go unrecognized. to some spectrum disorder for example is usually only noticed when a child has a toddler but the earlier it's detected the better the chances of it being managed and treated. researchers at frankfurt university hospital are trying to find out. what is autism interpret in these symptoms correctly is quite a challenge even for experts. 2 and a half year old lucas is taking part in

a study by frankfurt university's academic teaching hospital he's not affected and is being used as a control subject so far he's been developing quite normally. so what are the 1st signs of autism in a toddler. to find that out scientists at the hospitals autism therapy and research center truck children i moved once they want to find out if i to stick children see their world through different eyes. what we're trying to find out is how the eye moves. the list seems to be certain differences between children with autism and those without trying to stop them we know for instance that children with autism play much less attention to social stimulus like emotional faces or biological movements we know that only too well. but we don't know is why that's the case.

so therefore it is. time for an experiment using an eye tracker. while lucas follows the images on the screen in front of him the eye tracker logs how long his gaze rests on the various figures and faces shown. how quickly do his eyes respond what holds his attention longest and which emotions appealed to him. initial results indicate that children with autism stare at certain images longer and they have difficulty refocusing their attention they lack a broader view. of what we're hoping to achieve is to get a better insight into it to perhaps detect autism earlier. so that we can say we found a marker of the eye movements and continues the diagnosis from that. right now we

can only reliably make a diagnosis on the basis of behavior in the 3rd year of life. the earlier autism can be diagnosed earlier with medial therapy can be applied besides i movements the frankfurt team has found other signs in the brain clinical director christina fi talk manages the autism research center. her team uses brain scans to investigate the cerebral anatomy of people affected by autism it seems that their new ronal networks are woven differently could early diagnosis improve life for those of you. acted on it what if we go there is a hypothesis that the earlier support begins the more elastic the brain is and that up to a point can compensate a little bit. but recognizing the minimal differences in brain structure is not easy to do it neuroscientist christina eka uses

a software which recognizes patterns it's algorithms compare hundreds of brain scans to calculate the probabilities of accurately predicting autism before her 4 years early prognosis is especially important for instance when someone in the family is already affected that increases the probability many times over and it would be an interesting scenario if a sibling had autism then you can start scanning very early on and make a forecast based on our models and done off bozza stanwood lives on the 4 years ago . but for now computer diagnosis is just a pipe dream and i movement analysis requires a lot more intensive research as well but the sooner the early signs of autism can be deciphered the faster therapies can be developed to help the children affected. the majority of people with disabilities live in developing countries often in

poverty. mell nutrition a lack of sanitation and poor medical care often lead to disabilities that could be avoided. it is estimated that 2 thirds of visually impaired people could actually regained their eyesight using simple measures as this report from rwanda. it's 9 in the morning in the cup clinic in rwanda as usual the waiting room is already teeming with people. little angelo is waiting with his mother new mg echo the 2 year old has already undergone his 1st operation that was 2 months ago when doctors had to remove his cancer stricken left eye. but guiding eye clinic is an oasis of hope for patients across the country it attracts large

numbers up to 170 people can gather here as they wait to be examined the treatment cabins are all occupied staff work around the clock there are only $7800.00 doctors in all of rwanda compare that with $8000.00 in germany now it's a little angelos turn doctoral koori studied medicine in germany he removes the child's dressing carefully the wound from the operation is healed well dr will corey wants to try and save angela's other eye he examines it closely and discovers a tumor is already growing here as well unfortunately angela was initially taken to a so-called miracle healer for treatment a custom that is widespread in rwanda valuable time was lost as a result. it's.

the 1st sign of an unusual white reflection on the eye or luko korea was it 6 months old now he's 2 and a half months meaning they came here 2 years too late after the i had already grown out and was being pressed out the mother only brought the child to us when the same thing happened with the other eye cancer of the retina or retinoblastoma is curable but 70 percent of african children contract it because they're diagnosed too late for effective treatment doctorow corey uses a special found scope to examine angelos retina it allows him to see how far the disease has progressed he decides to treat the right eye with chemotherapy. believes public health education is required to prevent suffering of this kind. we have to raise awareness about it and get treatment closer to the patients localities because of a patient comes to us too late the tumour can be deadly if they come here early

enough we can save the eye and possibly their vision as well. that's why dr corey and his colleagues regularly visit the countries more remote villages. he's seen a lot of the world born in levanon he grew up in tubing and in germany and worked in paris he arrived in rwanda in early 2019 once a year he comes to this outreach clinic where he performs operations for days on end here he comes across patients who can't afford a trip to a city i hospital over half the people here there are an extreme poverty there's no expensive laser technology in this operating theater every move has to sit perfectly. can treat 50 to 60 patients a day here a mere drop in the ocean a day later in the cup guy i clinic. the operating team works relentlessly 12 hour days are the norm almost 80 percent of the country's eye surgery is carried out

here. in the meantime angelos mother new ghetto prepares frood the hospital kitchen. mother and son have been here for 8 weeks now but me and draco hasn't given up hope . of. going up his income and i need help i believe the doctors here can help my son or. if outlook is right why are they bad i'm a very patient. do you have a science question you'd like us to answer. send it in as a video text over with well if we featured on the show if you look at a little surprise from us as a thank you come on just ask. you'll find us on our website oh on twitter.

now here's a question from a viewer in nigeria. how do you fish c.n.n. morta. underwater everything looks blurry to humans that's because water has a higher density than act so light waves bend as they pass from eta water and the slow down that means an image isn't focused exactly on the retina as is the case out of water but behind it hence the blur diving goggles compensate for that. fish by contrast have almost spare ical hard lenses and can see everything up to a distance of one meter clearly. to look further away. just focus by moving the lens closer to the retina they still can't really see far but usually they don't need to. they have

a wide panoramic view because of their side facing eyes. ultra wide angle camera lenses called fisheye lenses mimic this effect. fish see more colors than we can they have receptor is not only for red green and blue light but also for ultraviolet. all in the dark depths that helps them locate prey that sport brilliant colors fisherman use colorful bait to exploit this ability in fish. some fish it turns out to can distinguish different human faces. as a study of archer fish found. they shoot down prey by spitting a jet of water. in the experiment they were trained to hit a picture of

a particular face in most cases they succeeded. fish vision is far better adapted to water than ours otherwise they wouldn't survive. most of our planet is covered with water land makes up only about a 3rd of the area and of that only about a 3rd is covered with forest. in most forests humans have encroached hunting felling trees and clearing arable land. in africa and south america in particular the forested area has declined significantly over the past 30 years. in asia and europe on the other hand some lost forest has been regained through a far station example of the varian forest national. shows how it can be done. for 150 years the glass industry and forestry methods have shaped the bavarian

forest. what was once wild mountain mixed forest has become a spruce monoculture and it was here of all places that germany's 1st national park was created a wager with an unknown outcome because nobody knew how to turn this kind of a commercial forest back into a primeval forest. mikail held was deputy head of the national park for many years he knows the forest intimately he still poking around here. as a forest scientist and local he followed the beginnings of the national park very closely. in their own phones the early years of the national park no one really knew what national park actually meant and you made clearing some of the spruce trees for example and then planted furred trees because you wanted to make it more

natural it was hard to imagine that and we are natural forest would develop in the direction of a primeval forest without human influence without forestry interventions in confession. but 2 years after the national parks inauguration a storm fell to $3000.00 spruce trees the park's manager at the time dr hans be bullied decided to try an experiment. against massive resistance from the national park forestry office which was still responsible for the care of the forest at that time he made sure that a few 100 trees weren't removed from the forest and were simply left where they fell ringback ringback. then a process began around the dead trees that hardly anyone had previously thought possible within 10 years a new species of rich and near natural forest would grow in the nutrient in rich. soil where the trees had fallen. so could it be possible that humans don't

have to interfere in order to regenerate a natural forest. in 1983 a violent thunderstorm provided an opportunity to test that hypothesis the storm flattened spruce trees on about 90 heck cares. parking manager hons people veto wanted to leave the trees in the heart of the national park and the ministry of forestry gave him the green light. it was a revolution against prevailing nature conservation ideas. the same try to always and you know you with this decision there was also a new nature conservation strategy in germany process protection as the scientists called it or wilderness as the tourism experts called it and then later people die to coin the term let nature be nature for this type of conservation where instead of humans acting they just let nature get on with it you know to argue. as hoped

the forest also regenerated itself on the large when throw areas without human intervention. but the biggest disaster and with it the biggest test for the national park was still to come. in the 1990 s. the park was to be expanded that led to heated exchanges with private forest owners and the population. then in the high areas between the and an area of around 70 square kilometers of spruce trees fell victim to the bark beetle. in the ninety's the national park with its principle of letting nature to be was on the brink of fail by the note even the nature conservation association. i suddenly had doubts as to whether this principle was really right for the national parks thank god politics remains steadfast on

toast. because even in the tough climate of the high country between hostile and lose and the forest regenerated itself within a very short time today it's growing with a level of density and biodiversity that humans could have never created and with the new wilderness long lost residents are also coming back. links roam the national park again. and 2 wolf packs. primeval forest relics species find habitat again in the diverse natures of the ecosystem. in 50 years the national park has become a hotspot of biodiversity with its new near natural forests. mikail head is grateful that he was allowed to be a part of this development. the bavarian forest national park venture paid off and today the concept of letting nature be nature is applied in national parks

worldwide. that's it for this week's edition of tomorrow today. more news from the world of science and research next time until then stay safe and stay curious.

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this is news coming to you live from berlin as germany heads into a 3rd wave of the coronavirus pandemic a return to tighter lockdown looks likely. seeking to toughen the restrictions says code cases sold that could deal a fatal blow to many small businesses already on the verge of going bust also coming up southeast australia worst flooding in decades following days of torrential rains authorities say dozens of towns are cut off with more bad weather on the way.